The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  The painted man expected him to be easy prey. He screamed, in rage or feigned rage, and attacked again. Peter had rolled on his back with the force of the kick, and he had the knife in his hand, and when the painted man – his red and black and white mixed in blotchy patches that looked like a skin sickness – jumped at him, Peter killed him as easily as such a thing could ever happen. He rammed his blade deep into the man’s belly and then rolled him over as he screamed in shock and desperation, his wild eyes suddenly wide with the despair of agony leading inevitably to death.

  Peter ripped the knife up his abdomen, spilling his guts and covering himself in the man’s gore.

  Then, full of his own terror, he plunged the knife into the man’s eyes, one and two.

  By then, the blotchy man was dead.

  Peter lay there for a moment. Every one of the last hundred heartbeats was open to him like a long book, carefully read, and the remnants of his erection reminded him that he had passed from one extreme of life to the other in that time.

  He tried to get to his feet but his knees were shaking and there were men all around him.

  All Sossag men.

  Skadai held out a hand and hauled him to his feet with a firmness that seemed threatening. But was not.

  Then Ota Qwan was there, with a steadying hand.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ he said.

  Peter opened it, and Skadai stuck a bloody finger into his mouth and began to chant. Ota Qwan grabbed his arm tightly. ‘This is important,’ he said. ‘Listen: Skadai says, “Take your foe, Gruntag, into your body.” ’ Ota Qwan squeezed again. ‘Skadai says, “Now you and Gruntag are one. What you were, he is. What he was, you are.” ’

  Peter wanted to retch at the taste of coppery, warm blood inside his mouth.

  ‘I say, don’t make a habit of killing Sossag,’ Ota Qwan said.

  ‘He attacked me!’ Peter squeaked.

  ‘You were fucking his woman, who was only using you to be rid of an inferior man. She avoided the shame of sending him from her blankets by arranging for you to kill him. Understand?’ Ota Qwan turned to a group of painted men and said something, and they all laughed.

  Peter spat. ‘What’s so funny?’

  Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Our humour. Yours later, but not now, I think.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Peter said.

  ‘They asked how you were. I said you weren’t sure whether the dick or the knife went in more smoothly.’ Ota Qwan’s eyes were a bright blue, and the man was amused. ‘You are now a man, and a Sossag. Killing your own should not be a habit, but you must know by now what the Wild is.’

  Peter spat again. ‘It’s every hand raised against every other hand,’ he said. He had trained to kill all his young life, and his first failure to kill another man had made him a slave. But this sudden success felt more like rape than victory. He was covered in blood and worse, and yet these men were congratulating him. ‘There is no law.’

  Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said. ‘There are many laws. But the greatest of them is that the strongest is the strongest. And every creature, weak or strong, makes a good meal.’ He laughed. ‘It’s no different at the king’s court. But here, it’s fair and honest, at least in that no one lies. Skadai is faster and deadlier than I will ever be. I will never challenge him. But another man might – or a woman – and the matrons would name a form of challenge, and the challenger would face Skadai. Or perhaps simply attack him – but that sort of victory does not always result in the killer gaining the power and prestige he seeks. Am I making sense?’

  ‘Too much sense,’ Peter said. ‘I want to wash.’ Peter wanted free of this alien man and his paint and his aura of violence.

  ‘I tell you this because now other warriors see you as a man and you may be challenged. Or simply killed. Up until now, I have protected you.’ Ota Qwan shrugged.

  ‘Why kill me?’ Peter asked.

  Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘To raise the number of men they’ve killed? Or to claim Senegral, your woman?’ He laughed. ‘Grundag died easily because he thought you were a slave. He wasn’t much of a man, but he was a fighter, and his very stupidity made men afraid of him. They are not afraid of you – although the way you opened him and cut out his eyes may make some men afraid. But many men want Senegral, and she doesn’t like to say no.’

  Peter had made it to the stream, and despite the cold and the sharp rocks, he threw himself into the low pool where the men washed their cups, heedless of the layer of water-swollen grains where a hundred wooden bowls had been washed after dinner. Heedless of leeches. Wanting only to get the sticky blood and intestinal matter off his hands and his belly and his groin.

  From the water, he said, ‘Perhaps I should just kill her.’

  Ota Qwan laughed. ‘An elegant solution, except that her brothers and sisters would then surely kill you.’

  The water woke his brain and froze his skin. He put his head under the water and come up floundering, feet aching from trying to balance on sharp rocks. ‘What can I do?’ he asked.

  ‘Paint!’ Ota Qwan said. ‘As a warrior on a mission, you are exempt from such treatment. Unless you provoke it, of course. But men are not as swift as other animals, as deadly in a fight, as well-taloned, or as long limbed. Eh? But in a pack, we are the deadliest animals in the Wild, and when we paint, we are a pack. Do you understand?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I will paint. And that commits me to make war against people I do not know to gain a little peace at home.’ He laughed. His laughter was strange and wild and a little crazed. ‘But they enslaved me, so they can take the consequences.’

  Ota Qwan nodded. ‘I knew you would make one of us from the moment I met you,’ he said. ‘Don’t disdain us. We do as other people do, we just don’t call it by pretty names. We make war now to support Thorn, but also so that all the other killers and all the other predators will see our strength and leave us in peace. Will fear us. So we can go home and grow squash. It is not all war and knives in the dark.’

  Peter sighed. ‘I hope not.’

  Ota Qwan made a noise. ‘You need to paint soon, I think. And have a name. But I will let someone else name you.’

  He gave Peter a hand out of the stream, and then took him to a fire, where he removed the horde of leeches stuck to the former cook. On another day, the leeches would have appalled him, but Peter bore their removal with hardly a glance, earning a respectful grunt from an older man.

  Then Ota Qwan spoke, and all the men and several women stiffened, paid close attention, and went to their blanket rolls, returning with pretty round boxes of pottery and wood – some covered in remarkable designs made with coloured hair or quills, and some made of gold or silver.

  Every little vessel held paint – red, black, white, yellow, or blue.

  ‘May I paint you?’ Ota Qwan asked.

  Peter smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. He was exhausted and almost asleep.

  Three men and a painted woman did the actual painting, under Ota Qwan’s direction. It took an hour, but when they were done Peter was black on one side of his body and red on the other.

  But on his face they had painted something more intricate. He had felt the woman’s fingers on his face, around his eyes, her own rapt expression and slightly open mouth oddly transfigured by the fish she wore painted across her eyes.

  When they were done one of the men brought a small round mirror in a horn case, and he looked at the mask over his face, the divisions of white and red and black like herring bones, and he nodded. It spoke to him, although he wasn’t sure what it meant.

  He left them his shirt.

  He walked though the firelit darkness, and the air was cool on his painted skin, and the fires burning at every camp were warm, even from a distance. Ota Qwan led him from fire to fire, and warriors murmured to him. He nodded and bowed his head.

  ‘What are they saying?’ he asked.

  ‘Mostly hello. A few comment on how much taller you are
now. The old man tells you to keep your paint clean and sharp, and not muddy it as you used to do.’ Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Because, of course, you used to be Grundag. Understand?’

  ‘Christ,’ Peter said. And yet, the murmured welcomes straightened his spine. He had triumphed. He didn’t need to wallow in the killing.

  He was alive, and tall, and strong, and he rather liked the paint.

  At his own fire, Senegral had made all of Grundag’s belongings into a small display, and she gave him a cup of warm, spiced tea, and he drank it. Ota Qwan stood at the edge of the firelight and watched.

  ‘She says, look at the good bow you have. Some of your arrows are very poor. You should make better, or trade for them. And she says that she will try not to inflame other men, if you will only keep her the way she wishes to be kept.’

  Peter went through the carefully laid out goods by the bark basket, holding each item up in the firelight. Two excellent knives and a good bow with no arrows to speak of; some furs, a pair of leggings and two pairs of unadorned moccasins. A horn container full of black paint, a glass jar with red paint. Two cups. A copper pot.

  ‘I thought women made their men shoes?’ Peter asked.

  Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Woman who fancy their men make them magnificent moccasins,’ he said.

  ‘I see,’ Peter said. He packed everything back into the basket. The woman came and stood next to him, and he put a hand under her skirt and ran it up her leg to her thigh, and then around her thigh, and she made a sound, and soon enough, they were back where they had been when the dead man kicked him in the head.

  At some point she moaned, and later he laughed aloud at the absurdity of it all. He wanted Ota Qwan to translate his thoughts to her, but of course, the man was gone.

  Why is he helping me? Peter thought, and then he was asleep.

  And in the morning, all the painted men rose, took only the equipment they needed for violence, and followed Skadai. Peter took the bow and the best knife, and his paint and a single red wool blanket and strode naked, after Ota Qwan. He found it surprisingly easy to ask no questions, simply follow.

  Later, he asked Ota Qwan how to get arrows, and the man silently gave him a dozen.

  ‘Why?’ Peter asked. ‘Is it not every man against every other man?’

  Ota Qwan laughed. ‘You know nothing,’ he said. ‘Do you not follow me? Will you do my bidding when the arrows fly and the steel fills the air?’

  Peter thought about it. ‘I suppose I will.’

  Ota Qwan laughed. ‘Come. Let’s go find your name.’

  South of Albinkirk – de Vrailly

  Jean de Vrailly clamped down on his impatience and it turned, as it always did, to anger. The blossoming of his rage always made him feel sinful, dirty, and less of a man and a knight, and so, while riding easily through the high ridges and spring flowers of Alba’s fertile heartland, he reined up his second charger and dismounted, to the confusion of his brothers in arms, and knelt in the dirt beside the road to pray.

  The mild pain of kneeling for prolonged periods always steadied him.

  Images floated to the surface of his thoughts as he imagined the crucifixion of the Christ; as he pictured himself as a knight riding to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, or inserted himself in meditation into the adoration of the Magi, a lowly caravan guard sitting on his charger behind the princes who adored the newborn lamb.

  Contempt broke through his reverie. He despised the King of Alba, who stopped in each town to play to his peasants, win their sighs and their raucous laughter, still their fears and give them law. It was done with too much drama and it took too much time, and it was obvious – obvious to a child – that something was happening in the north that required the instant application of the kingdom’s mailed fist.

  Disgust. The knights of Alba were slow, slothful, full of vice and barbarity. They drank, they ate too much, belched and farted at table, and never, ever exercised in arms. Jean de Vrailly and his retinue rode from town to town in full armour, cap à pied, with heavy quilted cotes under hauberks of ring mail surmounted by shining steel plate – three layers of protection, which every knight in the East wore every day of his life – to town, to church or to ride out with his lady.

  The Wild had not made a major incursion in the East in a century, yet their knighthood stood ready to fight at every moment.

  Here, where stands of unkempt trees stood on every ridge, and where an incursion of the Wild threatened a major city just over the horizon – the knights rode abroad in colourful tunics with fashionable, long trailing sleeves, pointed shoes and carefully wrapped hats like the turbans of the far East, with their armour stored in wicker baskets and oak barrels.

  Right now, four days from Albinkirk, a party of the king’s younger knights and squires were hawking, riding their palfreys along the ridge tops to the west, and he wanted to punish them for their light-hearted foolishness. These effete barbarians needed to be taught what war was. They needed to learn to take off their chamois gloves and feel the cold weight of steel on their soft hands.

  He prayed, and praying made him better. He was able to smile to the king, and nod to a young squire who ill-manneredly galloped down the column raising a cloud of dust, mounted on a hot-blooded Eastern mare worth a hundred leopards as a racehorse and worthless in a fight.

  But when the army, which grew every day as contingents of knights, men-at-arms, and archers joined from each town, each county, each manor, settled for the night, de Vrailly ordered his squires to set his pavilion as far from the rest of the army as could be managed – out in the horse lines, surrounded by beasts. He dined simply on soldiers’ rations with his cousin, summoned his chaplain, Father Hugh, to hear Mass and confession of his sins of passion, and then, shriven and spiritually clean, he bathed in water from the Albin, the mighty river that rolled by the door of his tent, dismissed his squires and his slaves, and towelled himself dry, listening to the sound of three thousand horses cropping grass on a beautiful spring evening. The smell of the wildflowers overpowered even the smell of the horses.

  Dry, he dressed in a white shirt and braes and a white jacket, a jupon of the very simplest style. He unrolled a small, precious carpet from far to the east, and opened a portable shrine – two paintings hinged face to face for travel – the Virgin and the Crucifixion. He knelt before their images and prayed, and when he felt empty and clean he opened himself.

  And his archangel came.

  Child of Light, I salute you.

  As he did every time the angel came, de Vrailly burst into tears. Because he never quite believed a visitation was real, until the next one confirmed all of the past ones. His unbelief – his doubt – was its own punishment.

  Through his tears, he bowed. ‘Bless me, Taxiarch, for I have failed you many times.’

  He tried never to look directly into its shining face which seemed in memory to be made of beaten gold, but in fact looked more like mobile, sparkling pearl. Looking too closely might break the spell—

  It is not your error that the King of Alba did not do as we wished. It is not through you that this kingdom has been untimely assailed by the forces of Evil. But we will overcome.

  ‘I succumb to rage, to contempt, to self-righteousness and anger.’

  None of these will help you to be the best knight in the world. Remember how you are when you fight, and be that man at all times.

  No priest had ever put it to him so well. When he fought, he dismissed all worldly concerns and was only the point of his spear. The archangel’s words rang through him like the meeting of blades between two strong men, like the clarion call of a stallion trumpeting.

  ‘Thank you, lord.’

  Be of good cheer. A great test is coming. You must be ready.

  ‘I am always ready.’

  The archangel placed a shining hand on his forehead, and just for a moment, de Vrailly looked up into the archangel’s shining face, his outstretched, perfect hand, his golden hair, so much brighter than de Vrailly�
�s own and yet somehow alike.

  Bless and keep you, my child. When the standard falls, you will know what must be done. Do not hesitate.

  De Vrailly frowned.

  But the angel was gone.

  He could smell the incense, and he felt at peace – his mind comforted, languorous, as he was after he had a woman, but without the sense of shame or dirt.

  He smiled. Took a deep breath, and sang the opening notes of a Te Deum under his breath.

  West of Albinkirk – Harmodious

  Harmodius lay on a pack of furs, the pottery mug of warm wine balanced on his chest, and watched Random stir a hot poker into another beaker, adding honey and spices.

  Behind the merchant, Gawin Murien sat quietly mending a shoe. He didn’t speak, but he was going about the tasks of soldiering, and Harmodius was content to keep a watch on him. His left shoulder was now heavily scaled from the nipple to the neck, and down to the base of his bicep. The scales no longer seemed to be spreading, but they were growing larger and harder. The young man seemed curiously heedless of them – since the first night, he hadn’t remarked on them at all.

  Harmodius was old in guile, and had known many young men. This one was preparing for death, and so Harmodius watched him carefully. The second ring on his right hand held a phantasm that would drop the boy like a blow from a spiritual axe.

  ‘I like it sweet. But I have a sweet tooth,’ Random said. He grinned. ‘My wife says that all my efforts to win riches and fame are merely to ensure my supply of biscuits and and honey.’

  Harmodius drank from his cup again. It was far sweeter than he liked it but on this evening, under the curtain of stars with a dreadful enemy as close as the edge of the firelight, the hippocras was all he could have asked.

  Immanence.

  It was a mild shock, like seeing a former lover walk into a tavern. Somewhere not so very far away, something powerful was manifesting. It might be something supremely powerful, a very long way away, or something merely awesome and terrifying, in the next field.